Sift You as Wheat
by philosophiliac
Summary: A story I've been working for a while since getting into L4D. Elements of 28 Days Later/L4D - the infection began in the UK - now it's starting to show in Oz. Follows a number of different characters around Western Australia. M for violence/language.
1. Chapter 1

So the story for the moment follows a number of different characters, all of which are based in Western Australia.

Three of them - Justine (the Civilian in a safe zone), George (the backpacker outside a safe zone), and Cornell (the Special Air Services trooper) are based in Perth - the capital of WA - which is located in the Southwest. Feel free to look it up on Google maps, I've tried to make it pretty faithful to the real city.

Steve is an American helicopter pilot operating out of RAAF Base Learmonth in Exmouth, about 1000km north of Perth on the coast.

David is a farmer who owns a property near Meekatharra which is about 600km north of Perth and a fair way inland.

I have a rough idea of where this is going - it won't stay in Australia forever/for long - and may write in another character/a first person element/not sure, but at the moment this is more a draft for my own satisfaction than anything else. I would recommend not following it too closely as it is likely not going to be done any time soon :P but feel free to read and review if you like.


	2. Chapter 2

Static hisses on a large TV in a department store, throwing strange light out over the concourse. The watcher moves across the shop floor, around the bodies and the tumbled racks of clothes and other consumer items now disregarded, through the stench and the flies that not even deepest night will dispel.

A young man gradually appears on the screen in front of a living room, speaking in a west coast drawl, his likeness partially obscured by the electronic snow that occasionally flashes over the screen.

"...two weeks since the outbreak in Memphis...gotta ask... the fuck did the infection come from? We're told... form of neurological degradation... eating infected meat... poverty stricken countries, similar to Mad Cow... but seriously, what the fuck?! And the way that governments are reacting to it?! Check this video, some du-... on YouTube."

*The screen flickers. A news reporter crouched a few blocks from a burning building swims in and out of focus through the hash.*

".... believed.... infection began... -ed Kingdom as early as 2001 and... end of 2004 more than 4 billion in Asia, Africa, Eur-... dead or turned. Here we are at the scene of an accident where just a few hours ago... tenant reported to be acting... authorities quarantined the building... evacuated and cordoned 4 city blocks... unsure how the fire sta-... Jesus!"

The camera zooms in on the scene down the street at the clatter of gunfire, the TV's image quality clarifying instantaneously to show a small child, followed by two burning shapes, running out of the building - only to be torn to shreds by a hail of automatic gunfire from soldiers positioned in the street. The shapes screech and jerk as they are hit by the bullets, managing to run a few steps before falling. The little girl goes straight down onto her face with the impact of the first bullet.

The news camera zooms in on the soldiers kneeling in the street. There seems to be some consternation amongst the men as an officer tries to restore order, waving over his shoulder at someone behind the trucks. The voice carries faintly up the street.

"Sergeant! Torch them! They might be infected!"

A man wearing a heavy suit with a large bulky hose walks out from behind a truck. With a roar that can be heard clearly from up the street, flames leap from the nozzle of the hose and engulf all three shapes on the grou-

"Hey! You can't film this!" Two soldiers are running down the street from their blocking position near the burning apartment building.

The jumble of confused voices rises in volume and pitch; the reporter, the cameraman, and the soldiers arguing and shouting. A gun is raised. There is a shot. Screams. The image blurs as the camera man runs toward a van, a technician running round the side and jumping into the driver's seat. The engine starts. More fire from behind, a deeper, booming clatter of a large caliber machine-gun. The side of the van in the shot is shredded, glass smashing, tyres exploding in the few seconds before the cameraman is hit and goes down hard, the camera clattering to the ground. The image cuts out.

The image remains black for a time before the young Calfornian comes back on the screen. His eyes are wide and his hands are shaking as he adjusts something on the desk in front of him. Abruptly he leans off to the side of the frame and vomits noisily.

When he reappears his voice is shaky.

"We're fucked. You can see how quickly the fabric of our supposedly civilised world has torn apart in the face of this infection. I mean, Jesus, I barely even get reception from the major TV channels any more. The few snippets of news that I can get when the internet is up or when the radio is broadcasting or the TV isn't playing up is all bad. The infection is spreading, it can't be stopped, it's jumping from town to town and turning or killing everyone in a matter of hours. Entire cities are turning into chaotic, violent battlegrounds in the space of a day. It's projected to have hit LA by next Monday, six days away. But they predicted it would take more than a week for New York to fall, and we all saw ho-"

The TV abruptly cuts out. The floor goes dark, save the light thrown out by a fire burning in the main concourse of the mall and the moonlight shining in through the glass doors at the other end of the shop floor.

Without warning, the tannoy blares, bizarrely, chillingly, somehow playing what seems to be a voicemail message or an audio diary entry.

The sounds of heavy, panicked breathing, and sobbing in the background, are accompanied by a rhythmic beating and pounding noise.

"They're outside the door, Jesus, they're outside the door. Oh- oh my... god, there's men in the street... the - they shot one of the neighbours when he tried to get out. We can't get out, they've told us we have to wait in here. Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, they shot him - we can't get out. It doesn't matter anyway, I think... I think we're the last... everyone's been turned. Bobby... Bobby, I love you so much. Oh God, I love you so much... They're trying to get in throu-" there is a roar and suddenly the crash of splintering wood drowns out the voice and the sobbing in the background becomes screaming as a-horde-of-running-feet pitterpatter**pound** into the room the-microphone-is-dropped-in-the-chaos-and-the-rec--A deep hacking cough echoes through the department store.

The watcher whirls from their position in front of the TV, searching for the origin of the noise. A shadow staggers across the mall floor, coughing and mumbling something indiscernible, outside the department store. Then another. And another. The watcher takes a step backwards, and trips over something on the floor behind them. The grunting becomes silence. Then excited chatter and screeching. The watcher gingerly raises their head, to see the shapes loping into the department store. Turning, they break into a run for the emergency exit sign at one corner of the floor, and hear the screeching rise an octave as the dark shapes break into pursuit.

Bursting into a service corridor, the watcher comes to an abrupt halt as they see the burning, twisted mess of metal that was once the service stairs to the ground floor exit only a few feet from them, across the corridor. The door smashes open against the wall behind them, and something heavy rams into their back, carrying them forward over the edge of the stairwell and down into the fire...

The watcher wakes, sweaty and yelling in twisted sheets. A dream. _Christ_.


	3. Chapter 3

_Christ_.

Steve shot straight up in his camp cot, yelling. He couldn't remember the dream, but he suspected it was something to do with being shot down and overrun by a horde of screeching, biting, clawing infected... most of the guys and girls had been having those nightmares every time they closed their eyes for the past couple years. The mobilisation call was sounding. _Shit_. He scrambled out of bed, throwing on some fatigues and grabbing his SAE pack and carbine before bolting out of the relative cool of his air-conned sleeping space in the back of one of the catering trailers. _Shit_. If he wasn't back by sun-up to break down and pack away his cot and living gear, the kitchen boys would just dump it all in the dirt when they arrived to start prepping for the day. That was the agreement. _Shit shit shit_.

Arriving at the run in the Joint Operations Cell, Steve quickly panned the room, found his 2IC and crew chief standing close to the front, and nodded to them - since his co-pilot had arrived before him she would be the one being prepped and briefed. His job now was to get the helo powered up and ready to fly - to ensure that it could lift off the ground within seconds of the final go being issued. Catching a glimpse of Colonel Hawley ushering pilots and crew chiefs into the briefing room, Steve ducked back out the door, and jumped into a waiting Patrol, the ground chief, Jim Morrison - no relation - in the driver's seat. He would have brought it over to pick up the pilots from the JOC after making sure his groundies were prepping the helos properly. He knew that noone liked to make the five-hundred metre dash from the JOC to the hangars carrying their SAE pack and M4A1, not to mention the risk of a pilot tripping in the scrub and breaking a leg or twisting an ankle. The last pilot dashed into the JOC to check on his air-crew, and then came jogging out, and jumped onto a side step of the Patrol. He hammered on the roof to signal that he was ready, and the 4WD peeled away from the front of the building, heading north to the hangars.

"Apparently a couple of _lesgars_ have managed to put one of the defenders over on patrol. They ran into a bunch of infected and got a little over-zealous in pursuit," yelled Jim over the noise of the Patrol's engine.

"Fuckin' French!" shouted one of the pilots from the back seat - and there was a smattering of laughter from around the cabin - from those who heard, or weren't too wrapped up in personal ritual.

When Steve got to his chopper and jumped into the pilot's seat, he felt the usual excitement beginning to well up in his stomach, as well as a stab of nervousness. If some of _lesgars_ - a crude abbreviation of the French _les garcons_ that had come to represent the thirty something dirty, hardened and brutal ex-international mercenaries of the French Foreign Legion that worked closely with Steve's aerial unit - were stranded and in contact, especially with an infected element, the pre-flight checks and bureaucracy would be perfunctory at best. The armada would be going in hard... all of them. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw Lei and Geoff running towards the helo, followed by a 7 man _lesgars _CSAR contingent. Lei conveyed to him in rushed conversation the general briefing while they finished the pre-flight checks, disconnected the final hose from the side of the helo, taxied out to the runway - and then sat waiting for launch confirmation. Only seconds after the last pilot's voice confirmed over the radio that their helo was powered up and ready to go, Colonel Hawley's voice came over the radio.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, _Centurion, Centurion, Centurion_." Steve felt a flutter of butterflies - it was tonight's code for go.

Immediately voices chimed in from all comers confirming the go-word. And the armada launched into the night sky.

"Fuckin' _Centurion_!" yelled one of _lesgars,_ all the men in the helo feeling their stomachs drop as Steve hammered forward the collective and eased forward on the cyclic to bring them to a roll before a quick takeoff. As the wheels lifted off the ground, the nose dropped sharply forwards, and Steve felt the familiar thrill as his instincts screamed at him to _pull up! -_ but he held the cyclic steady, and within seconds the Black Hawks had screamed out over the ocean between the mainland and the Exmouth Peninsula, leaving the lumbering Chinook taxiing down the runway and the slower, smaller Little Birds buzzing behind.

A little under 20 minutes later, Steve eased back on the cyclic to bring the nose up and flare the bird to a slower speed.

"There's our boys!" called Lei. Three men were on knees around an upturned Landrover Defender. At the sound of the helicopter rotor blades, one of the men pulled something out of a crate at his feet.

"Is that a flare?!" yelled Steve in disbelief, "What the hell is he thinking?!"

With that, the man shot the paraflare into the air, its bright light illuminating the bush for a hundred yards in all directions... and bringing every infected for miles running.

The radio came abuzz with activity as the pilots of the four Black Hawks responded with varying degrees of shock to the slowly spiralling flare, with the other pilots and HQ yelling for _goddamn fucking sitreps_! There was a conflicting chatter of voices as a pilot immediately got on the net and informed HQ of the situation.

"_Caesar, Caesar, _be advised, the ground element has just let off a flare. They're gonna be in a lot of trouble very soon."

"That's affirmative, _Checkmate-one, Checkmate-two_ and _three, Legion-six _(the Chinook, the two Little Birds and the ground unit of _lesgars_)_,_what's your ETA?"

Having taken off a little time after the rest of the helicopters, the faster Chinook was only just catching up to the nimble but slower Little Birds.

"_Caesar_, this is _Checkmate-two-six _(the pilot of the first Little Bird), all remaining airbornes are ETA in niner, I say again, niner minutes."

"This is _Legion-six_, we're fuckin' hammerin' it here and ETA thirty five minutes, that's three-five minutes."

The fire on the ground was already intense, but Steve could see tens, if not hundreds, more infected running towards the crash site from every direction.

"Affirmative all responses, make the site ASAP. _Checkmate-six-six_, what's your assessment of the situation?"

"_Caesar_, this is _Checkmate-six-six_, I recommend _Checkmate-four_, _five_, and _seven_ pull back or go to a higher hover - we need to minimise airborne presence because the racket we're making here is bringing every infected for miles screaming for blood. We need to get these boys out. We need to get them to an LZ and into a helo NOW or they're gonna be overrun."

"Negative _six-six_, Black Hawks will maintain a low cap orbit over the site and provide air cover. Do you think you can land now and retrieve the men?"

"Negative _Caesar_, the ground is too rough and there are too many shrubs. We can hold a hover of about five to seven feet at the lowest, but we cannot put down. Ground element needs to get to a clearer area where we can come in lower, but they need to move now or they will be taken apart while they're on the move. Recommend they retrace their steps north about a hundred and twenty metres to the road - we can land there."

"Be advised _six-six_, they have a wounded man. He hurt his leg in the rollover and he's apparently semi-conscious. They cannot move him and put up any defence in the event of the infected compromising the rollover site."

"**Jesus Christ**,_ Caesar_, why weren't we informed of this? We'll need to put men on the ground to help move the casualty."

Lei turned to the _lesgars_ CSAR contingent, yelling over the engine noise. "What do you guys think? We'd be putting you in at a hover."

The CSAR leader, a burly ex-South African reccondo, yelled back in a heavy Rhodesian accent; "We need to go down there. There's nothing we can do from here, eh? We have to get down there, or they're all going to be fucked."

Steve passed this message on to Hawley back at base. "Sir, we need to put some men on the ground now, we cannot wait for _Checkmate-one_'s CSAR contingent and we definitely can't wait for element _Legion _to get here. Our boys are keen. We have to put them down now or we're not going to get anyone back tonight."

"Affirmative _six-six_. Hang on a second."

Steve was furious at being made to wait. The mini gun had been firing non-stop for so long now that all anyone in the cabin could smell was the cordite and the hot metal - and still more infected were running from the bush all around. The decision needed to be made now - they had to put men on the ground. A minute later Hawley came back on the net.

"_Six-six, _roger, put your men down to assist with the evac."

Steve pulled the helo into a tight bank around to the southwest, where he could just see the outline of the Chinook and the Little Birds a few kilometres away against the moonlit clouds. He was heading for a clearing next to a dried up dam, about seventy yards from the stricken Landrover, so they could get a little lower to ensure that none of the men hurt themselves jumping from the helo.

Lei yelled back to the CSAR team again, explaining the situation. "We're going to put you in from about 4 feet up. The Landrover is about 70 yards to your northeast - you should be able to see it. We'll be able to evac you from the same clearing, or a road about a hundred yards directly north of the crash. One of you has to stay in the helo to spot out the right window."

There was some consternation as the men did a last check of their weapons and gear and decided who was to stay behind. The helo cleared the trees and Steve flared it hard, bringing it to an abrupt hover about 20 feet in the air, then quickly lowered it until he started to see the wiry desert trees just in front of the cockpit, and hear them scratching up the underside of the helo. The men cleared out of the helo quickly, leaving the designated spotter, a British ex-paratrooper, crouched in the right hand gunwindow of the Black Hawk.

Steve waited until the men were clear, then pulled out hard, and moved into a stationary cap hover covering east of the tumbled offroader. The CSAR men had almost reached the rollover site when disaster struck. The mini gun, which had been firing constantly since the flare had been let off - seven or eight minutes ago - jammed. Its feeder and delinker mechanism had fused from a combination of the heat and the residue of the disintegrating links between the cartridges.

"_Caesar _and all other elements be advised, _checkmate-six_ has lost its only mini gun. I say again, we have no fucking mini!"

The men reached the site, pulled the injured man out from under the cab, and began strapping him to a field stretcher, the two medics tending to his injured leg and checking his vital signs. The other men began firing hard at the yammering, moving shapes all around them. Steve saw the CSAR leader glance upwards at his helo at the same time as his voice came over the radio, his calm voice and guttural accent cutting through the panicked mess of voices on the net.

"This is _Star-six-six_, yah? Howsit up there, mah brut? Down here's like being in the bush in Angola all over again, eh? Bad luck on that mini gun just now. What is it you want us to do now, clearing or road?"

At that moment, there was a deafening ripping-screeching-tearing-roaring, heard clearly even over the engine noise in Steve's Black Hawk, as the first of the Little Birds came screaming in low and fired a salvo of rockets and mini-gun fire, strafing the bush to the west of the crash site with devastating effect. Steve watched, in awe, as the infected and the bush around them literally came apart under the sheer volume of fire, the rockets blowing geysers of earth twenty or thirty feet into the air. The young British _lesgar _spotting from Steve's helo received a small gobbet of meat on his shoulder, causing him to yell and scream blue murder until Geoff, turning from his ministrations to the mini gun, brushed it off in disgust.

"_Checkmate-six-six_, this is _checkmate-one-six_, we are 200 yards off the crash site to your east."


	4. Chapter 4

_Christ_.

David's eyes snapped open. He'd had that dream again. Wearily he clambered out of bed and set himself to get about the day's work. He found Mike in the kitchen, already eating a dry bowl of cereal.

"Beautiful morning out there, Dave," Mike commented as Dave poured himself a drink of water from a tank of sterilised rainwater. They were both pretty sure that they were immune, after all, they'd been coming into pretty regular contact with the infection for months now, but they weren't figuring on taking any chances.

"Dave..." Mike broke into Dave's thoughts, "I reckon I'm probably gonna leave. If you could come into town with me to get a vehicle and some supplies, I'd appreciate it. Gonna head south, see if I can't find somewhere safer to stay."

David sighed. He'd suspected this was coming for a while, but he hadn't wanted to push the issue.

"I'll hang around for a couple days at least, let you make up your mind if you wanna come or stay here, and at least help you set up all the feed for the next couple months and all that if you decide to stay. I reckon you should come though, hey, we could be the last two left for ages and our survival chances are much higher with more of us. What do you reckon, mate?"

It did sound like a good idea, after all, the farm would go spare with just one man running it - it was bad enough with the two of them running it - it was far too big a property to manage. Besides, they could always fortify it, go down south to see what they could find, and then if they needed to they could bolt back up here with anyone they could find - try and retame the farm after it had been left to go bush for a few weeks or months or years.

However, David knew he had to weigh the options. Although the infection seemed to be getting worse and worse around where they were situated, who was to say it wasn't the same everywhere else? They'd lost all contact with the outside world save a couple people in town and so on who had holed up in their houses. And the last he'd heard, the government wasn't acting very friendly towards anyone found on the streets, although they hadn't been seen around these parts for years...

David walked outside, into the early morning sunshine, and looked around the farm. The fences needed re-wiring, the cattle all needed to be cut and hocked, the feed was starting to run out, and the cotton bushes were starting to be a real problem in the Northernmost paddocks. He certainly couldn't deal with this on his own.

Mike came out behind him. "I figured I'd get all my stuff together tonight... plan to head into town over the next few days, get a car, dig up some supplies, maybe try and get my hands on a police shotgun or something..."

They could take the Landcruiser - they probably wouldn't need a second car between the two of them.

"Count me in."

"Really? Wow... that's great! I reckoned you'd need a little more time to decide than that. OK, well over the next few days, we'll need to prepare - we can knock a few fences up across gates and things like that, cut a few wires here and there, turn the farm into one big paddock for the livestock to run around in... board up the house, bury all the valuables, dig up all the vegies, figure out how to take the dogs... it's gonna be a hard slog, getting everything ready."

He started walking down to the large shed - he'd have a last poke around, see what they couldn't come up with to take with them.

They would need to go into town... to get supplies, fuel, food and so on from the abandoned shops... see if anyone else was up for coming with them.

--

Even though it was early morning and cool, Dave was still sweating, bent over the vegetable garden out the back of the house. He stretched upwards and knuckled the small of his back with his left hand, his right holding the shovel that he had been using to hack at the tough soil. He grimaced as he felt a painful twinge in his back, accompanied by a slight click. _I'm getting too old for the farm life_. He grinned. Too old for the farm life, maybe, but apparently still young enough for dangerous cross country jaunts into the great, zombie infested unknown. The last few days had been a frenzy of activity, as he and Mike boarded up the house, herded all the animals into a lone paddock, wired open all the gates on the property, checked every inch of the external fences, and did the million and one other things that just kept cropping up in preparation for their leaving.

A commotion from around the side of the house made him drop the shovel and snatch his rifle from its leaning position against the wheelbarrow. He had jogged to the corner of the veranda before he heard Mike begin yelling curses, as well as one of the dogs growling fiercely. As he skirted wide around the corner of the house, rifle at his shoulder, he first saw one of the dogs tugging and pulling tenaciously on a bloody side of meat, growling and barking in its frustration. Then he saw Mike, who was sprawled in the dust, the car fridge having proved too heavy for him to negotiate down the veranda stairs by himself. Mike was tangled in the electrical cable extending from the back of the fridge, and was holding the other end of the large haunch steak of meat which had obviously spilled from the fridge. He was trying to prevent the dog from making off with it, and swearing _bloody goddamned stupid _blue murder at the creature. David couldn't help it. He lowered the rifle, sat down heavily against a nearby tree and began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, sitting there, occasionally glancing over at Mike, who, for his part, had relinquished the steak to the dog and had rolled onto his back where he lay and chuckled at the sight he must have been. The dog trotted off proudly with his pound of meat to a hole in the side of the shed, where he flopped down and began to chew.

Soon enough, Dave levered himself up off the ground, and helped Mike shift the fridge into the back of the Landcruiser, where they packed the rest of the supplies. After bagging up the all the veges that he had managed to dig up that afternoon, and packing them in the back, Dave called Mike to lend a hand hooking up the trailer to the car. For the next two hours they packed food, water, tents, petrol, camping gear, ammo, spare parts, gas, and anything else they could think of into the trailer, the back of the car and onto the roof rack. Then, returning to the house, they gathered up everything of personal value and buried it all deep in a big box under the big gum tree out back, choosing only to bring a few personal items in the car with them. Dave brought a photo of his wife and an early sketch of the farm house that had been done by his father when he had first moved onto the property and finished building the house. Mike took his guitar and a knife that had belonged to his grandfather. The two of them called up the dogs into the back of the car, then got in and drove slowly away from the farm. Mike jumped out quickly and let all the livestock out of their one paddock before shutting the final outer gate to the property - and they began the drive to Meekatharra.

About 20 minutes later Dave brought the car to a halt. They sat just outside the town, finding that neither wanting to explore the now-deserted urban sprawl that lay abandoned in the desert. Mike broke the silence.

"We should head into town, see if we can get hold of some more food and better weapons. Ammo too."

"Sure," David agreed, "But I also want to see if there's anyone still alive down there... maybe we could take them with us."


	5. Chapter 5

He'd been snatched out of the back of the Landcruiser by some... _thing_... as they had passed under a bridge. It had drawn him, kicking and screaming, to itself where it was hanging from the underside of the bridge. And there they had fought. He was vaguely aware of the plight of his teammates as they had fought their way out of the crowd of infected, now without a man on the machinegun, but most of his attention was taken by the spindly, growling thing stuck to the underside of the bridge. It was obviously an infected - they had seen other mutations, but none as strange as this - and it was trying to crush him to death with its incredibly long, bony and somehow strong arms. They struggled. Finally, he managed to stab it, and screaming, it _threw_ him away from itself. He fell to the road ten metres below, slamming into the ground. His crash gear absorbed some of the shock but it still fucking hur-...

Chris lay where he had fallen on the freeway, pain blurring his mind like a bad hangover. He was fucked up, he knew that much, and even that was fading into a feeling that was kind of light and floaty.

He fell asleep, not knowing how much time had passed. The circus shifted around him. There were clowns running everywhere, chasing a big elephant which stepped on some of them, but they were all a long way away from him. He saw a dark blur of flailing meat-shadows shooting out flashes everywhere until they exploded suddenly into bits and nothing, like a magic trick. He laughed at the fireworks, even if they were so far away, the distant popping sounds and the bright flashes. Occasionally a flash would come over to see how he was doing, and it would say to him _ZING! _as it ran off into the darkness again. He laughed until it hurt, and it _really_ fucking hurt. But then he remembered - it had been hurting the whole time he was in the circus. He was terrified for a short time, convinced he was lying on a road somewhere, dying, but then he told himself to stop being so stupid. He was at the goddamn circus.

Or maybe dreaming-

-of the circus. His mouth and throat tasted like batteries. After a time, the fireworks stopped, it was quiet, the shadows and flashes decided to stop dashing around and have a rest, and all the people stopped running around too.

Or were they... clowns?

He couldn't remember... something... any more. What was it?

Shortly, there were more bright flashes running down the road towards him with big, booming, earth-shaking footsteps, and Chris thought _fuck yeah man more fireworks i love fireworks where'd those fucking clowns go?_ There was a great heat.

Chris died.


	6. Chapter 6

Justine woke up on the floor with the tangy, acidic taste of blood and bile in her mouth. _What the fuck? How did I get down here?_ As she tried to get up, she felt a stabbing pain through her left side, and, doubling over, threw up onto the floor. Some vomit splashed onto her trackpants. She felt rather than saw the floor rushing up at her.

The world shifted around her. She lay on the floor in her room, in a puddle of her own vomit, and watched the light change, the shadows shift, and creatures of darkness move through her apartment. Her head really hurt. The pain was like oil, lethargically pulsing and flowing from her temples through her entire cranium, and then down her neck into her chest, down her arms, down her legs, until all she could feel was throbbing, throbbing, throbbing everywhere. She felt like her entire being was beating like a giant heart. She blacked out.

Again, Justine woke up on the floor, although this time she had some idea of how she got there, insofar as she could think of anything clearly. Her head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton wool soaked in petrol and dusted in chili powder, and served with a mild helping of pain on the side. She staggered to her feet, half fell sideways, and caught herself on the table. Just opening the fridge was a monumental task in itself, but removing a bottle of water without disturbing any of the other contents proved completely fruitless. After scattering half of her fridge on the floor, and wrestling with the bottle of water for what seemed like an eternity, Justine finally managed to open the twist cap. She collapsed heavily onto her arse against the kitchen wall, let her head fall back, and lifting the bottle of water, poured it all over her face and into her open mouth, swallowing what she could.

She sat there for perhaps another hour and a half before her head started to clear. Upon rising again to her feet, she felt another bout of nausea hit her and retched over the sink. Although she didn't feel hungry, just sick, she knew that she had to eat something to keep her energy levels from bottoming out completely after her ordeal. _What the fuck just happened?_

--

As she munched on one of the last apples in her fridge, Justine felt a pang of annoyance. _I should have gone with an MRE. Apples are too rare nowadays to risk throwing it all up again in half an hour._ She was still struck every half an hour or so with a bout of dizziness, but these were becoming more infrequent and less intense.

Staring out the window revealed little - it was about 4AM, and no one was out and about yet. Justine watched as the three men of a security patrol strolled past, a stray cat making itself scarce as the wind carried their scent down the street towards where it had been lazing on top of a car. It looked like a normal night, and yet the darkness seemed pregnant with terrible secrets. Justine told herself to stop being so stupid. She was just shaken by her food-poisoning, or whatever it was. _Yeah._

Justine moved away from the window, across her small apartment and into the similarly small bathroom. As she undressed, turned on the water and stepped into the shower, pulling the curtain closed behind her, she felt the tension, rather than ebbing out of her with the flow of warm water as she had expected, begin to build within her. She felt as though the secrets she had sensed in the night were rushing in on her, as if she teetered on the edge of some abyss, some nightmarish realisation hovering just out of her reach.

The phone rang, making Justine jump; she almost fell out of the shower. When she recovered a little of her composure, she felt a burst of irritation. _Who the fuck makes phone calls at this hour?! _Dripping, she got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around herself, walked out into the main room, and picked up the receiver.

"Hey gorgeous, it's me... Ben. Can I come over? We need to talk."


	7. Chapter 7

_Christ._

George rolled over, his side aching. He was unaware of what had woke him, until he heard a sound from the next room, or perhaps from outside the apartment. He silently rolled out of bed, and grabbed the pump-action shotgun next to the bed, nudging Phillipa awake with his other hand as he did so. She came instantly awake with a gasp, and sat up, her eyes wide at the sight of the shotgun in his hand. He motioned for her to be quiet and nodded his head at the next room.

Phillipa opted for his pistol over her own lever action .303 rifle in the enclosed space of the apartment, and together, they moved out of the bedroom, Phillipa almost tripping over a stuff sack discarded against the wall, across the kitchen, through the hole they had knocked in the wall of the apartment, and into the next apartment where they had fortified the entrance to the central courtyard.

Hearing something behind him, George whirled around to find Jesper stepping cautiously through the makeshift doorway with his Benelli M1 at his shoulder.

"What's going on?" Jesper whispered to him. "I heard something. You guys getting a snack?" He eyed the weapons.

A soft _click-click_ of fingers came from across the apartment. Anne had emerged from one of the bedrooms facing the street, holding one of the rifles, and signalling for them to duck down.

"A car drove past," she hissed, "I'm not sure whether they're government or other survivors, like us, I couldn't really see but I think it was a big 4WD, a Landcruiser or something like that. I think they parked up the street... I thought I heard the engine stop, and I could see their parking lights up the street till a couple minutes ago."

--

George raised his head cautiously, Mossberg held in both hands, to spy the Landcruiser only a few dozen yards away. He was lying in a front garden across the street, among the remains of some rose bushes, ignoring the thorns clutching at his clothes and skin. A man was leaning on the Landcruiser, smoking a cigarette and holding a large rifle of some sort. He shifted slightly, obviously scanning up and down the street, and George caught his breath as he got a better glimpse of the man's weapon. An AK-47, or somesuch variant of it. Even most of those who had never held a gun before knew the famous Russian assault rifle, thanks to any number of Hollywood movies.

Another man, holding what looked to be another automatic weapon, came out of the house directly across the street from George's location, carrying a large pack over one shoulder. The man at the car turned to whisper something to his mate, and the sound of distant gunfire popped softly through the still night air. Both men froze, and swivelling, scanned the street, before turning in the direction of the sound - north. A third man came hustling out of the house to the continuing chorus of machine gun fire, also bearing assault rifle and large pack, and also turned north to face the far-off noise.

Phillipa touched George's shoulder. "We should go. George, if there's gunfire in the city then I think we need to get out of here."

George looked up at the three men, two of them, having dumped their packs in the house now bustling back inside, the third grinding his cigarette under his boot and watching the street with renewed vigour and a very nervous attitude, and was struck by the insight that _these men are just like us_. They were survivors, probably picking up supplies they had long ago stashed in this house. The sound of breaking glass or china accompanied the two men as they hurried out of the house, this time with a pack over each shoulder and a large duffel bag each - they were literally staggering under the weight of supplies that each man was carrying.

He stood up, slowly, not wanting to aggrieve the three men now hurriedly loading bags into the Landcruiser, and softly called across the street to them. The reaction was instantaneous. All three dropped the bags they were holding and snatched up their weapons from where they had been hanging on slings at their sides. One immediately took a knee at the rear of the vehicle, sweeping his gun over the other side of the street, eyes roving, while the other two of them came jogging across the street to where George was standing, one a few paces behind and to the left of the lead man, both with weapons up and shouting.

"Orright now, drop it! Fuckin' drop it!"

George could only take a few stumbling steps backwards before the lead man was on him, holding his rifle low with his right hand and grabbing George's shoulder with the other hand. Planting a firm knee into George's groin the man spun him roughly around, pushed him down to the street and knelt on the bicep of his outstretched gun arm, which was still holding the shotgun. Through the agony of his bruised gnads, George saw the other man come up on the left side of his assailant, gun up, and looking up, saw Phillipa drop her weapon and receive the same treatment - albeit somewhat more gently.

The man kneeling on George called out "Secured!" and received the same confirmation in response from his colleague who had disabled Phillipa, before looking down at George and asking, simply; "Now then, who are you lot, eh?"

"We're just survivors, like you," George replied through gritted teeth, "We don't mean you any harm, but if you don't let me up to signal my friends, then they'll probably panic and shoot you."

The man seemed somewhat taken aback at this answer, and George heard the other man by the car say to let him up. The pressure was taken off his back and arm, and George got up cautiously, noting that the man had taken his shotgun. Phillipa was in a similar predicament, unharmed but weaponless and obviously terrified at how easily they had been rendered helpless. The men stood back in the road, uneasy but not aggressive, and George waved his right arm in the air - giving Anne the signal not to shoot - before turning back to the men.

"So where are you guys from?"

"We're just stragglers - we've noticed more and more infected coming in to town up north, so we're heading south. What about you?"

The northern sky lit up faintly orange and a series of rumbling explosions echoed in the distance.

_Maybe getting out of here is a good idea..._


	8. Chapter 8

_Christ_.

Cornell jumped slightly as he woke. The same goddamned nightmare again. He rubbed his eyes and looked around owlishly. They were just passing through what was left of Gosnells, on Albany Highway. Jerry, his spotter, nudged him softly with his boot from his position at the back of the Landcruiser.

"You were only out for a few minutes," he murmured, "I figured I'd let you snooze for a little bit - the CO didn't notice." He nodded towards the forward of the truck where their CO was flaked out against the passenger side window, snoring softly.

Cornell rubbed his eyes again and yawned. He was bone tired. They were on the way back in from a routine patrol out in the back of beyond, up through the hills, and they hadn't slept in going on 40 hours. He shifted his venerable L2A1 FN FAL into a more comfortable position on his lap, and kicked his bergen back under his knees so it couldn't slide around.

"Werner, jump on the machine gun," Geoff Teagan ordered, now apparently awake. "Let Cornell drive for a bit."

--

The driving was relatively uneventful, and Cornell found himself almost drifting on autopilot a couple times as the CO radioed their position changes to central command. He was jolted from his reverie by Werner's voice in his earpiece as the signals man swung the .50cal around to the left soon after they had passed the Canning Bridge.

"Be advised sir, I have three, say again, three large vehicles moving down Mounts Bay Road towards the freeway, looks like two big four wheel drives and a van of some sort. They're driving with taped up headlights. Just at our ten o'clock now."

Cornell spotted what looked like two figures wandering around along the Freeway, heading away from the approaching SASW patrol.

"Sir, I think there's two people in the road up there." Cornell squinted through his night vision goggles, trying to make out what he had seen further up the freeway, letting the Landcruiser slow down from 80 to about 30 as he did so. There was something very strange about the whole scene - for one, it was illegal for normal citizens to go for midnight walks, especially on the freeway! The figures were stooped and were staggering - one of them looked like it had a broken ankle from the way its leg was shifting when it put weight on it. One of them threw up, the vomit pure black in the soft green of the night vision goggles. Cornell's eyes widened in shock. _Infected! _He grinned. _How often do you run into infected on the freeway? I know people used to describe the traffic on the freeway as a nightmare, but this is ridiculous!_

"Sir, they're fucking infected!"

"Affirmative Cornell, maintain this speed. Werner, wait until we're 50 yards from them, then hit them."

"Affirmative, sir."

As they were approaching 100 yards from the pair, the first infected turned and looked at the cars approaching, obviously having heard something behind it. It let out a high gabbling squeal, which was drowned out by the deep thumping report of the mounted machine gun as Werner opened up on the two figures with the .50cal. The infected twitched and jerked as the bullets tore into them with terrifying force, ripping whole chunks of flesh from their bodies where they hit.

Cornell pushed steadily and calmly down on the accelerator, and let the needle creep back up to 40 - 50 - 60, as the Landcruiser's turbo-diesel 6 cylinder engine roared at being made to pick up the slack so quickly and on such short notice.

"Multiple infected contacts closing right!" yelled the voice of Chris Garvey in Cornell's ear-piece. A deep _boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom! _signalled that he had also opened fire with their .50cal on an unknown target from the second Landcruiser about 400 metres back. Cornell flicked his eyes to his wing mirror to assess the situation and felt his blood run cold. Tens, or possibly hundreds of infected, roused at the noise of the gunfire, had come screeching and yammering out of the South Perth suburbs. There was a _BANG_ accompanied by a shudder as a man ran full pelt into the driver's side of Cornell's Landcruiser about halfway down its length as it sped past, bouncing off and into the concrete barrier that separated the freeway and the planned Mandurah railway line constructions, (long since abandoned), but then, thankfully, they cleared the last of the crowd. Cornell swung around and grabbed a quick glance over his shoulder at the plight of the second SASW car, which had not been so fortunate. As the pack of lopers ran into its path and beset it from all sides, it began to slow under a mound of dead and dying, crushed, shot, and smashed infected. The 4 men were all firing hard, and kicking and pushing anything that managed to get a hold on the sides of the car as it lumbered past, pushing a wave of corpses in front of it and **crunching** over the bodies of those that had fallen under the wheels. Garvey was firing with the .50cal into the crowd of infected in front of the car, trying to thin them a little bit, when Cornell, stealing constant glances in the rear-view mirrors and over his shoulder, saw a pair of terrifyingly long, spindly arms unfold from the underside of a pedestrian footbridge. Garvey was plucked, screaming, from his position by the long arms and yanked into the air. Cornell's jaw dropped at the sight, and he kept his eyes resolutely on the road ahead for the next ten seconds or so until Jerry tapped him on the shoulder and told him to stop the car. They were now about two hundred and fifty yards from the second vehicle, and they all dismounted and started putting round after round into the few infected running towards them and the ever growing crowd around the other car.

As Cornell watched; the Landcruiser, badly beset on all sides, missing the machine-gunner, and now only making about twenty kilometres an hour under the weight of dead infected, began to bounce from side to side as sprinting infected slammed into it, trying to claw their way into the open back. Jack Burnham, standing in the back and firing his Minimi machinegun from the hip into the crowd, was jolted off balance and fell over the side of the car, and was immediately swallowed in the horde, which began to fall away from the vehicle. Cornell saw tracer rounds flying out upwards, and watched as infected in the area fell from what was obviously Jack putting up a hell of a fight as the horde bit and clawed at him on the ground. The screeching, screaming noise was ungodly.

Suddenly there were a series of deep _WHUMP_s and the crowd of infected vapourised, blood and limbs spiralling away from the site of the explosion. Jack had pulled the pins on all his grenades.

The second Landcruiser, now only carrying Philip Carlholt and Emmanuel Ljundgren, slowed as they approached their counterparts to find Werner vectoring in some sort of firebombing to wipe out anything left of the horde that had poured out of South Perth. Both soldiers were white and shaking as they stepped down from the Landcruiser. Together, the men stood at the base of the Narrows and poured round after round of fire into anything left moving, shooting the occasional infected that came pounding out of suburbia towards the ruckus. After a time, there was nothing more to shoot, except bits of meat, in most cases too shredded to even be called corpses any more.

Just then a deep voice came on the radio from a cold situation room hidden in the depths of a military base somewhere. "All military personnel, be advised, word is just coming in that the South Perth bubble has an element of infection within the walls. Attempts are being made to establish contact with the bubble in question and to quarantine the area. All personnel are to clear the area immediately and return to sterile green zones."

A tinny American voice on the radio, a dark shape that had powered over the city from behind them, a long series of flashes and a continuous ripping screech indicated the arrival of their support, as a military attack helicopter unleashed twenty four high-impact incendiary rockets into the bodies, limbs and blood that was now all that was left of the infected, making the ground tremble and turning the fifteen hundred yards of freeway in front of them into a maelstrom.


End file.
